Why do people deny evolution?

Note that I said similar, not just like.

I just stumbled onto the book that was said to inspire Charles Darwin to begin his journey on the good ship 'Beagle'.
It was entitled: 'The Invention of Nature'.

Just struck me as funny.

If its the one about von Humboldt , its a good read.

I hvent started 1984 yet , busy busy .
Ill be back in about 3 days maybe less. Ill try to do a download onto a kindle

The movie version made in the year 1984 is very good.

This is the (anti)Trump scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvGmOZ5T6_Y

Theres several movies versions and on or two are somewhat closer to the book.

The casting for the 1984 version was awesome. Winston looked exactly like I pictured him when I read the book over a decade earlier.

Darwin went along on Beagle to do geology. I'm skeptical of any such claim as "the invention of nature." His later work was built upon notes he took along the way, but his primary mission was to do geology.

You might be right. But isn’t geology 'Nature' too?

You are skeptical of 'invention'.
I’m skeptical that it was all just an accident.

Well, it was certainly no accident that he was aboard Beagle. His observations about morphological variation in finches, however, was accidental, as that was not why he shipped with Fitzroy.

I take it you didnt read "The Invention of Nature"?. Had you, you would unerstand that the subject of the book was as much as anyone, and more than many we credit, responsible for our understanding of how the natural world is interconnected through time as well as place.
It was a bit repetitious and , if you really wanna red a less popular, more scholarly report on an attempt at "Resurrecting" von Humboldt's reputation, Walter Lack's work maybe would be more satisfying. Still, the "Invention of NAture" is more a paean (sp?) for Humboldt's work and an argument to restore his place(outside of Germany) among th early workers in the nat sciences.
Just a thought

Darwin and Covington were never hired on as "naturalists"(or whatever the ten dollar word for puffy sleeve dilettante bug collectors were called then). Darwin was selected by a fluke in Fitzroy's crew list. Fitzroy's cousin was originally chosen to be a "hunter and supplier of meat and an "educated companion" for theCapt . However cousin bagged out and Fitzroy, a strict Biblical Fundamentalist , sought a like companion

Fitzroy was disturbed at Beagles history of having 2 prior captains ,commit suicide , rportedly because the captains quarters and deck-spaces were isolated from the crew spaces(The ship was only 90+ feet long and was (I suppose) broken into 30 feet for Fitzroy and 60 feet for the remaining crew.

So DArwin's sign on title was not as a naturalist or geologist (that grew as an assumption of duty when the original naturalist , the ship's surgeon Robt McCormick, apparently went nuts in Montevideo and abandoned the ship .


Darwin was, interviewed and accepted by Fitzroy because Fitzroy was already beginning to see the problems between an inerrant Bible and the young science of geology. Fitzroy specifically wanted a companion who shared his Fundamentalist views about the natural world and the ancient world. Darwin was apparently a real chameleon because he and Fitzroy published several "Creationist style" tracts while on the Beagle voyage. (THeyd write em up and drop em off at the next port of call and these were published by arrangement with the same publisher that handled Darwin's "Journals of Researches into th Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by the HMS Beagle

This book, as titled, wasnt a big seller. The publisher then had lunch with Darwin and said something to th effect that"
"Charlie, yer killin us with this title , Jesus H Chrisse , cant you come up with something snappier??"
So he retitled it "Voyage of the Beagle. Charlie then became one of the most BS laden "experts" on geology and , I suggest that you read "Voyage..." , Its one of the most scientifically inaccurate volumes in the ENglish languauge, but his target audiences (He made his big money in doing the overcooked chicken an mushy peas circuit) loved it.

Apparently , according to several Darwin scholars, Charles was as effective a speaker as Don Knotts doing his nervous little guy imitation. So his speaking dates were often infilled by T Huxley who made science interesting in his "Sunday Evenings for the People" lectures .
It was Huxly who did most of the eviscerating of the Fundamentalist lecturers who tried to provide beleivable arguments against Darwin's work and later Mendelian genetics.


Youre "Skepticism" should be followed back to its original arguments in which Darwin, after 6 editions of the same book, finally felt his own argument was effective enough to stand on its own. His book "The Origin of Species..." was just an argument, what he called an "introduction to transmutation under natural selection"

But I digress.

In hiis ed 1 of "Origin...'' Darwin opens the book with
"While serving as naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle on its..."
yatta yatta something about rocks and seals and ****.

But he was historically miscast as "THE naturalist" when he wasnt, ever,(Mainly because he was never paid. In fact Darwin Paid Fitzroy for a five year trip and had to provision himself and Syms Covington, his man)

Apparently Darwin wasnt that bright, because he could have had Fitzroy buy his own MEAT provisions from "Charlie and Syms Meats Inc".
But I digress.

No, I haven’t read 'Invention ' yet, it was just the title that got me laughing. My reading list is probably longer than I have left. I’m leaning more to pure entertainment lately. Currently I’m enjoying a Private Investigator yarn. Forgot how much I enjoyed them. This one reminds me of Mickey Spillane having a much darker life.

That was an interesting story about how Darwin got aboard the Beagle. It may not have been 'Invention' that motivated him but neither you or Set spelled out exactly why he did. He must have wanted it pretty bad to pay for that miserable experience. But it was probably a walk in the park compared to colonizing Mars. Don’t get me wrong, I’d buy a ticket on the first ship out if I could. But I would not be looking for signs of Martian life.

Digressions are allowed and encouraged.

When professors Henslow and PEacock transmitted the Invitation for Darwin to join Capt Fitzroy (Since Fitzroys "cousin had taken another commission"), Darwin was excited. Actually Darwin was kind of a bit of an ADD "enjoyer". He went from failing at medical training (because it was said he was squeamish), He then didnt take well to training for the ministry. So when Darwin took the Invitation to his Father (Who , after all would be paying for the trip), he wasnt surprised that Dr Darwin wasnt thrilled. The ole man didnt forbid young Charles but he made a deal that if Charles could find a solid citizen of good reputation who would support Charles wishes to go on this adventure, Robert Darwin would cover the expenses.
Charles went to his uncle Josiah Wedgewood. Josiah, a much more cheery person than Dr Darwin ,supported the idea and Robt was set to go.

Darwin biographers think that Wedgewood wanted to have Charles "Stand off" from his daughter Emma , as a proper mate for the young lady until Charles had more world experience and such a trip would serve that purpose. (The fact that they were first cousins was creepy enough TO ME to get rid of the guy, but I aint a "Darwin Scholar", and "Hillbilly romance to your close relatives" was an ENglish tradition so who am I to denounce the mating habits of an entire country's upper clASS)

So Darwin was in as more of a passenger with benefits, than a common seaman.

Darwin, through his life was an amateur field Collector of "curiosities". He had a similar habit of keeping bugs and bunnies as dead specimens in a fashion that our own Teddy Roosevelt was supposed to have done.
The Darwin house often reeked of dead animals as Charles was prepping their skins. He did, of late and just before his trip, undertake an intensive interest with geology under the famous geologist Adam Sedgewick, so hed have collections of all these things as well.
It was the one thing he carried out through his life and he did it passionately.

The more I learn about this Ne'er-do-well the more I am amazed that his accidental notice of differing bird beaks changed the world as it did.

often cience has no idea in which directions its going until its well on the way there.

Uncritical common sense leads people to see differences without thinking beyond them to grasp commonalities and continuity between forms.

Darwin just showed how seemingly separate forms are actually related by common ancestry, leading to questioning of absolute categorical distinctions, which always stirs up minds/culture.

After the "Enlightenment" there was a clear cllap down on that kind Evolutionist thought. Things that were earlier thought about in some of Gran pop Erasmus Darwin's poems were , by the time Charles was a youth being educated, "Catastrophism" became all the rage.
In that hypothesis (All supposedly evidenced by fossils) species wre periodically wiped out and new forms "created ex nihilo") This sequential creation was proposed because it did NOT require that daughter species were in any way related by heritability or "transmutation" from older parent forms. such thinking would, naturally, be , an apostasy from decent Christianity where the Bible is inerrant.
So, re creating lif every so often was much more reasonable to even the great minds of the time.(Whereas a few, like Hutton, were often ridiculed for " adopting modernist BS").

Charles early career(s) were well formed from thinking by "strata" Smith and Charles Lyell.

You must never give credit to just the smartest guy in the bunchs, but often the most creative thinkers. Like Carroll Shelby, who knew how to surround himself with relatively untrained but really bright
creative thinkers like Ken Miles.
(YOU GOTTA SEE THE MOVIE)

But I digress